Google given access to healthcare data of up to 1.6 million patients

A company owned by Google has been given access to the healthcare data of up to 1.6 million patients from three hospitals run by a major London NHS trust.

A spokesperson for the Royal Free said patients would not be aware that data was being made available but it was encrypted and such an arrangement was standard practice.

It said: “Our arrangement with DeepMind is the standard NHS information-sharing agreement set out by NHS England’s corporate information governance department and is the same as the other 1,500 agreements with third-party organisations that process NHS patient data.